Wednesday, 23 November 2016

A little while ago, Jarbles did a video on her birthday, the second in her now
annual “lessons” series in which she describes as many life lessons she has
learned as years lived so far. I really liked the idea, and decided to do one
for my upcoming birthday. Since I turned thirty-mumble a few days ago I thought I would share thirty-hmnhrmnim lessons I have learned over
the course of my life, in typical long-winded Founder fashion.

As with all my blog posts, this may and probably will be edited in future with
new content. In fact, given the subject matter, I can see myself adding a new
life-lesson every year this blog remains clinging to my humble corner of the
internet, so feel free to check back in 12 months or so to see me summarize
everything I learned that year with another bit of fortune cookie gibberish.
This could well be a life-long project.

So with that, enjoy/I apologize.

1.Know yourself.

This is my most important lesson. The first lesson I learned in life, and
something I consider a lifelong rule. I first saw it emblazoned upon the walls
of a classroom in my school in the form of a Shakespearean quote: “This above
all, to thine ownself be true”. Because what’s the point in doing anything if
you’re not being true to yourself at the same time? It made sense to me on a
deep, almost spiritual level.

But to be true to yourself, you must know yourself, and that is far more
important. It’s also an unending task. You must explore yourself as you explore
this world, including all the new corridors that form out of those experiences.
There is a power that can’t be explained in truly knowing yourself. Something
that defies words. A sense of perfect order, like looking down upon a completed
jigsaw puzzle and comprehending that every piece is in its place.

Knowing your place in the universe, knowing exactly what it is that should and
does fill your footsteps makes it so that you can truly claim your body and
your life as your own. You are a being of indescribable complexity and
inexplicable specificity. You are unique. Like a god. Like a force of nature.
There’s only one of you, and only ever COULD BE one of you, and that uniqueness
is indestructible, and it’s yours­.
Knowing that creature is to know the things that only that creature could ever
do. Knowing that power lets you harness it.

It is important to know many things, to always keep learning and bettering
yourself. But all other things are learned by and filtered through the self.
Everything starts there. Knowing yourself is like securing the platform that
holds up all of the knowledge in the world, and mastering its use. After all,
if you don’t know yourself, what’s the point in knowing anything else to begin
with? Who’s learning it? Or is that knowledge merely its own master?

2.A person is defined above all else by their
principles.

It’s easy to label yourself a good person, or a rationalist, or a healer or
leader or anything else. Walking the walk is a different story. To be the best
that you can be, you need more than just idealism. You need to be able to
enforce your own self-actualization. You’re not defined by what you do;
otherwise we would all just be bags of mistakes. You’re defined by what you keep doing­. Whether or not you learn
from your mistakes, whether or not you are improving as a person. That’s what
counts.

As an intelligent being is it incumbent on you to think. Think about
everything. Ponder on matters ethical and moral, philosophical and scientific,
spiritual and mundane. Learn what your positions are on various different
matters, and whether those positions are sound. Establish the parameters of
your being, and then stick with them. Even when it’s hard, even when facing adversity. So long as the best information you have
access to is telling you which path is the right one, be true to those
principles.

Knowledge starts within, but change starts with what kinds of rules you are
willing to live by. I have mine, many are in this list. I follow them even when
I don’t understand them, because I trust the judgement of the person I was when
I made them, and I understand that as people we are prone to moments of
fallibility, anger, cruelty, neglect and many other harmful behaviours. You’re
only a good person if you can continue to act as such even when under the
influence of such negative feelings.

For example, I won’t kick a man when he’s down, even if in the haze of the
moment I really want to. Why? Because principles make the man, and if you only
follow your principles when it’s easy, they’re not really principles, are they?
Could there be any true honour in such a person? And what about you? If you
could break yourself down into a series of statements, what would they say about
you? Is that the person you want to be? Is there anything missing from that
figure?

Find out what kind of person you are, and if there’s anything in that person
you don’t like, work on it. Become someone who is proud to be defined by the
principles by which they live their life.Which leads me to my next lesson…

3.It is possible to change yourself.

NOT EASY. But possible. Habits can be broken just as they were learned, new
habits can be forged from the stuff of the old. You can bend your personality into
a better shape. But it takes time and work.

I don’t recommend you do it the way I did, but I am proof that it can be done.
What I did is to pull on every thread in my conscious mind and untangle my
entire sense of self. Unsatisfied with the way I was, I sought to deconstruct
myself, and rebuild myself in a better image. I borrowed personality traits
from all over. The best people I knew, the ones I admire. I introduced behaviours
and inflections, improved ways of thinking, changed my accent, I even added
personality flaws. I took the broken eggs life had given me and worked to bake
them into a cake.

Personally, I would recommend a more incremental approach. What we think of as
self is really more like a big, complicated computer program. And each line of
code is really just a different habit. We are smorgasbords of habits. Rituals,
routines, repeated actions, we learn to navigate this world by building a
series of pre-programmed behaviours into ourselves, so everything we encounter
isn’t always like the first time we encountered it. We have this recorded
response to fall back on. Habits are incredibly easy to form, but almost
impossible to break.

But if you learn to read the base code of yourself, you can bypass that by
overwriting old habits with new ones. Practising new behaviours until pretence
becomes persona. Some things can’t be undone. Some things are just hard limits
imposed on you by genetics and circumstance, but even those things you can’t
control – you can learn to control HOW you choose to respond to them. Turning every negative into a positive is just
a question of perspective. Skills can be learned, attitudes adjusted. The only
true obstacle you have is how motivated you are to change – and believe me, I
understand that motivation is a very REAL obstacle.

But it is possible. Everything you want to be IS possible. Why? Because…

4.Human beings are infinitely capable.

What do I mean by this? I mean that people can do almost anything they set
their mind to given time and effort. That's the human superpower, and if you stop to think about it, it's goddamned amazing. Every time you see someone performing some
amazing skill on TV and think to yourself “man, I wish I could do that”, what’s
really happening there is someone who never tried something is watching someone
else who DID. The fact that other people can do those things doesn’t prove that
they are better than you; it proves that PEOPLE can do those things. And here’s
the important thing. You are a people.
Realise that. Don’t assign limits to yourself.

Now, I’m not going to pretend that things like age, disability or illness are
not legitimate limiting factors; of course they are. All I’m trying to say is…
don’t undersell yourself. Whatever obstacles you do have in life, never let
them be your defining factor. If you can’t do one thing, you can do INFINITE
other things. The number of things that are truly walled off from you, that you
are utterly incapable of achieving is far, far smaller than the endless list of
unexplored options you may be right for. There are SO many things we assume we
could never do; until we try.

I know that at least someone reading this is saying to themselves, right now, “that’s
easy for you to say”, you’re saying “you don’t understand, I CAN’T”. And you’re
wrong that I don’t understand. Asking you to try does not mean I am
trivializing how difficult it is, or even how impossible it seems. Look, unless
you know me well you won’t understand just how sincere I am in saying this, or
that I am not merely paying lip service to my own point, but believe me, I am just
the worst. I speak from no privilege,
with no presumption, and with absolutely no advantage. I have, when in the
darkest pits of my own self-loathing and despondence, discovered within myself,
at times, an amazing well of strength I didn’t know was there.

If I can do that, ANYONE can. Literally fucking anyone. It’s not like tapping
into a waterpipe, you can’t just unload a torrent of free willpower by thinking
nice thoughts. But you are SO much capable than you know, and if you think your
struggles stand in testimony against this, think again. Think instead about how
much strength you needed just go get through those times? Sometimes the
superpower a person has works round the clock just to keep them looking normal,
like if the Hulk had to drag a moon everywhere he went. He would be too tired
to do anything else, but he still is that strong. And so are you. You have that
power, and you can discover new ways to harness it.

Try, my friends. Try. You may surprise yourself. And if you feel compelled
to tell me that you could NEVER be as good as those truly great people you
admire?

5.Fuck modesty.

Modesty is one of my biggest pet peeves, so I’m about to open a big ol’ can of
fuck this all over your face. What is modesty? It is the socially engineered expectation
of pretending to be ashamed of your own accomplishments. No, it is not
humility. Humility and modesty are totally
different things­. Now, look, what I just said is sketchy, and I did
consult a dictionary to be sure. It turns out that the definition of humility
DOES mention the word modest. But here’s the thing, the definition of MODEST is
about five paragraphs longer – and all that extra baggage is my point.

Humility is a kind of dignity in strife. A form of remaining grounded to
reality and not allowing your pride to run away with itself. Modesty, however,
is an extreme. Modesty tells us that we should never laud our own
accomplishments. That we should trivialize and play down everything we do well.
That enjoying any aspect of yourself is ARROGANT or EGOTISTCAL. Well FUCK THAT.
No it isn’t. This is a form of the social bullying virus I have written about
here in the past. People who react to someone else being pleased with
themselves about something with vicious words like egotistical neither
understand that word’s meaning nor what they are really reacting to.

Here’s the real issue. Being a social species, we are compelled to a certain
democratic standard of behaviour. Voices in unison form consensus, consensus
dictates what is seen to be correct. This means that as a general rule, what
everyone agrees on becomes the expected reality. Nobody likes being punched in
the face; so face-punching isn’t allowed. You get the idea. But what everyone
agrees on isn’t always a good or correct thing. There are many things we all
share in common that are profoundly negative. For example, INSECURITY. People
who are extremely self-conscious (read: EVERYONE) will feel resentment towards
those who seem to be at peace with themselves, or even, gasp, shock, chagrin, CONFIDENT in themselves, even if but for a
fleeting moment.

This negative response is EASY, and so it is COMMON. So common that we have
constructed a social protocol in which people are unconsciously peer-pressured
into expressing a self-deprecating sentiment against themselves at every
possible opportunity, just to ward off the very IDEA that they are daring to
believe in themselves. They are SO pressured into this mind-set that they
literally feel SHAME if they don’t downplay their accomplishments. This is not
healthy. This is not good. If how you conduct yourself is dictated for you by
other people’s issues, you have an obligation to break the mould. Fuck modesty.
Be proud of what you have actually accomplished.

6.Always be honest.

This obviously sounds like a good rule in general, but it’s also the sort of
banal, meaningless drivel you would expect to hear from every tofu-guzzling
yoga instructor you’ve ever seen prancing about in crocs and a toga talking
about how to harness positivity with homeopathic chakra realignment. It sounds
just enlightened enough to be unobtainable and boring, while being
unrealistically disconnected from the human condition. But here’s the thing;
it’s NOT.

Being totally, 100% honest at all times is nowhere near as hard or as volatile
as it sounds. Now I won’t lie to you and say it won’t get you into any drama or
rub anyone the wrong way, but these are, after all, MY life lessons, not
necessarily ones that will be good for you. But on the whole, at least among
your true friends, it will spare you more drama than it will ever cause. People
will come to learn that you don’t pussyfoot for their benefit around the facts
which they inevitably have to face anyway. They will come to see that you
always tell the truth, and so they can COUNT on you for that when the truth is
what they really want.

If everyone always said exactly what they meant without waxing their words or
obscuring their opinions with layers of socially-ingrained vagueness, the world
would be a much better place. No more of the he said she said bullshit, no more
two-facedness or putting on a false smile when what people really need to see
is a raised eyebrow. Honesty isn’t just a tool of the sickeningly righteous;
it’s a tool for the pragmatists. It solves more problems than it could ever
create, and it leads us more directly to where we want to go without diverting
in a wide birth around other people’s delicate egos.

7.Stop caring about what other people think.

This is something you will be told again and again throughout your life,
and probably have been many times already – but it doesn’t matter, because
you’ve never really listened to it,
and never will. You will not really assimilate this perspective until you reach
your own, personal “ahah” moment and realise what it actually means. There is
an elective club of “don’t give a fucks” that roam this world undetected by
anyone else, with such a lightness to their movements that we can almost single
one another out from a crowd. People who hit rock bottom hard enough to break
through the other side and there discovered the punchline to life’s sordid
joke.

It sounds trite and simplistic, but it’s true. It sounds like what everyone
says to their friends during hard times, but no one ever really embraces it
until they have no other choice. And when they do, they find a kind of
liberation that can’t really be put into words. To have all of your social
anxieties and baggage boiled away until all that is left is this tiny morsel of
a being, the real, unsullied you. Beset from the junk. The thing you thought
had rotted away under all the mounds of garbage and deep wounds to your soul.
But you’ll find it. You’ll realise that you legitimately can NOT care about
what other people think of you, and hold your head high where once you slinked,
cringingly around unlit street corners.

I can’t stress this enough. I know you’ve heard people say it a million times.
But it is OBTAINABLE. All of your confidence and insecurities are tied to this
mirror you have trained to your face at all times, displaying a twisted version
of yourself that you imagine others see, until you are so self-conscious that
you can hardly remember how to walk. But you can, and one day will, toss that
mirror aside and march boldly through the crowds without the slightest of
cares. I’m not saying not to LISTEN to people, but you don’t have to invest
your own self-worth in what they say. I just wish people didn’t have to get
psychologically broken before they figure this out, as so often seems to be the
case.

8.Never make assumptions.

This is a rule that has served me well. Conjecture can be useful, but if
you proceed with anything on the assumption that things ARE a certain way,
without any evidence, you’re almost always going to find that assumption
backfire in your face; especially if you have my luck. The truth is this is a
major problem with society. People have become so coddled that they don’t
understand the difference between fact and opinion anymore. They feel entitled to their ignorance, almost like it's some sort of religious right. They get their
opinions from angry people on TV and have lost all capacity to care about fact-checking - and when you confront them about this, THEY feel oppressed.The only reason to fear reason is when you know the truth is likely not on your side. This isn't something to try to protect yourself from, it's something to embrace. I don't know is an acceptable answer, and it's the reason for you to go looking for the truth. Don't make the mistake of filling in the gaps in your knowledge with fantasies about how you would prefer things be, and then start defending their existence as if arguing with reality might change it. This is nothing less than the worship of ignorance. If you treasure your beliefs more than the truth, more than how you WANT things to be, you have sacrificed your credibility upon the altar of mental weakness.

Truth should be your ALLY, not your enemy. Life works better when you are INFORMED. When you come into a situation
knowing what to expect and how to handle it. The best way to achieve this is to
get out of your own way. Have your first impressions, by all means, just shelve them afterwards until they become relevant and focus on the facts that you KNOW before making any
decisions. If something seems obvious, that’s the greatest reason to reconsider
your opinion. The more certain you are, the more closed off you are to other
options. Those options potentially represent the things you don't know, and regardless of your pride, there will always be a vast order of magnitude more things you don't know than those you do.

9.See the best in people, not just the worst.

This isn’t easy to do, especially in a world this flawed. Sometimes it seems
like there are more idiots than rational people. More bigots and hateful minds
that those in search of peace and harmony. But I think it’s more the case that
every person is a spectrum unto themselves.

It would be foolishness to deny the animal within. We all have one. A beast,
buried in the deepest recesses of our consciousness, under layers of social
repression and obligation. It comes out in us during weak moments, those
venomous words you spit at those you love when stressed to your limits, those
moments you went for the jugular, and don’t really know why. Every drop of
anger or hate you have ever felt, however little that may be, condenses
somewhere in your psyche and feeds this beast, and I think to be truly
enlightened we must acknowledge and control it, rather than deny its existence.

Some people have less control over that compulsion for cruelty, and since human
beings are prone to irrationality, their beasts will creep out in the cracks of
their personality, latching onto subcommunities, ideologies, certain types of
people or practises. The very notion of righteous anger is inherently contradictory,
because while sometimes anger is an understandable response, it’s still just an
outlet for that beast. It’s just a situation in which we have social permission
to be cruel and hateful, and we relish those excuses. This dark side of
humanity is something we must be aware of, lest we allow it to control us.

Why are there so MANY instances of hate and negativity? Because we are ALL
flawed people, and different people have those flaws in different parts of
their personality. That doesn’t mean that any of those people are just bad to
the bone. Yes, it is very depressing that so many are so quick to cruelty, but
consider this. With very few exceptions, an act of love is what brought us all
into the world. And the human larval form being so pathetic, it took several
more months of dedicated love to raise us from tiny, hungry, screaming demons
that anyone with an ounce of sense would throw out the window into something
that could at least conceivably take care of itself.

That’s why no matter how much of a cynic I can be at times, I never quite give
up on humanity. Because look at us. Look at US. Several billion testimonies to
the intrinsic good of mankind. Billions of souls raised at the teat of
sacrifice and unconditional kindness. Aided by hormones and social obligations,
sure, but at the same time… we all exist because someone gave up literally
years of their live to wiping both our tears and our arses without hesitation, without
condition, and without asking anything in return. People loved YOU enough to wait
on you hand and foot, to defend you from all the harshness of the world for at
LEAST a good number of years.

So it isn’t the case that the world is filled with mostly individuals who hate,
and some who love. We are spectrums, existing across all frequencies of
emotion. The world is filled entirely with people who love, and a great many
who failed to reach than standard in at least one area of their lives. The
truth is, we’re all just fallible. We’re all idiots. We just have dedicated
areas of specialty for our stupidity. (That’s the part of me that is, in fact,
still a cynic). But it won’t help you to focus only on the negative. Notice it,
by all means, and attack it with all the strength you have, but draw that
strength not only from yourself, but from the knowledge that an equal, if not
far greater amount of love exists in the world, too.

THAT is what you’re fighting for.

10.Other people’s lives are your business only
to the extent that THEY affect YOU.

I’ve never been one to shy away from bringing other people to task when I think
there is a problem with their belief system or their values. And I don’t always
wait for an invitation to do so. I do consider it the duty of every thinking
person to attack misinformation and disinformation, to challenge the faulty
consensus, to cure social diseases with or without consent, and to tame the
wild horses of other people’s imaginations. But one thing unites all of those
concepts; ­harm.

If I think you are harming people, or by way of inaction or complacency,
allowing harm to be forwarded through you, I will take that on. This is the true
basis of morality. Some philosophers consider wellbeing to be the basis, but I
respectfully disagree. If wellbeing sits at the heart of morality then we are
obligated not only to prevent harm, but to create health; and while that is
morally laudable, I do not believe we all have a duty to all make each other’s
lives better, only to not make it worse. Anything more is a pleasant bonus,
not an obligation.

So if you think someone else’s lifestyle is some form of attack on your moral
sensibilities – ask yourself only this. In what way does it harm you? If two
people of a combination of sexes, gender identities, skin colours, religious affiliations
or anything else should couple, and you find that morally offensive – ask yourself
if that’s REALLY morality? Because if you can’t identify the difference between
YOUR personal preferences, and morality, that makes you a dangerous human
being. Someone who walks around without any actual grasp on what morality is
should be receiving medical attention, not preaching at other people.

And I don’t just say this because this is my soap box. I have to remind myself
of this, too. It’s a conscious, and difficult decision to turn a blind eye to
people spouting what I consider to be hateful messages about immigrants, flawed
political ideas, to be in love with the idea of millions of people walking
around with guns. These ideas sicken me. But I have to draw a line between
ideas I consider to be bad, and the people who hold them. I will challenge bad
ideas all day, but I’m not going to make it my mission to act like their
personal preferences are actually injuring me. Even if it can sometimes feel
that way.

11.BE what you would ATTACK.

By this I mean, don’t just go after the things you think are wrong. Try to
UNDERSTAND them. Try to BECOME them. Consider every viewpoint seriously, as if
it was your OWN. BELIEVE it on a deep, personal level, and comprehend why
others would rationalize it. Only then are you qualified to make any kind of
statement about what is wrong with it. Only when you have successfully put your
pride to one side and seriously considered the possibility that you might be
the one who is in the wrong can you say you have earned your right to say it’s
not so.

This isn’t easy. In fact, it’s borderline sociopathic when you really break it
down. I’m saying you basically have to be able to jump into anyone’s head and really understand their point of view. Racists,
homophobes, Nazis, scum of the earth. But everyone thinks they’re the good guy, and you can’t criticise anyone by just
dismissing them as some sort of frothing deposit from the spillway of pure
evil. In THEIR mind, they are in the right. And in order to challenge this, you
have to be willing to really TRY to understand why they think that, even if the
inevitable conclusion is simply that they are irrational or were raised that
way.

I make a point of challenging myself to construct an argument defending
everything I want to attack before doing so. Sometimes I even talk myself
around, and come to see a point of view other than my own. This is a good
thing. Correctness doesn’t start with you, so if you consider your own opinion
to be the yardstick by which you can judge what is right or wrong, consider
that everyone you disagree with is doing the same. For all you know, YOU’RE the
Nazi, and you just never got challenged by someone willing to help you see it.
This is why we have to collaborate to refine our understanding of reality. Work
together, not against each other. This is why we all must work to keep an
open-mind.

12.Know what you’re talking about

Everybody has an opinion on everything, but unfortunately facts don’t give
a damn what your opinions are. I participate in debates quite often, as anyone
who knows me can tell you. Those who can handle the debate with dignity and
respectability generally find it to be a productive experience. I am known for
ruthlessly pursuing the truth, regardless of what it might be, and I don’t
waste time beating around the bush of other people’s shallow nerves. But I have
my rules there just as I do in the rest of life, chief among which is that I
don’t draw first blood, but I do not suffer the fools who do.

So naturally, among those who fail to match my standards in such debates, an
inevitable onslaught of insults and accusations will usually follow. Often,
they will include something like “you think you know everything”. Of course,
the reality is, I don’t think that. But when you appear to know everything, the first conclusion of the weak-minded
is that you appear that way to yourself as well. It’s sort of like how budgies
can’t understand their own reflection in the mirror, people of this sort of
simplicity lack sufficient theory of mind to imagine you having an opinion of
yourself that is any different from their own impression of you.

But the impression itself, one which inspires such ire in those whose
understanding of logic extends as far as “but Bill O’reily said…”, comes from
the simple fact that I don’t express any opinions on things until I first know
what I’m talking about. You see, it’s the easiest thing in the world to appear
knowledgeable. You simply have to be
knowledgeable. If you prepare for a
debate before having it by seriously considering every viewpoint and looking
into every angle, you end up armed with an arsenal of retorts and responses to
every possible challenge. The result is that, to their perspective, you seem to
be some miraculous font of correctness that they just can’t defeat.

Of course, among your more rational peers, this will be less a source of
resentment and more a mark of distinction. And this doesn’t have to be limited
to debate. This is a general life principle. It’s better to know what you’re
talking about before opening your mouth than to opine with impunity. There are
so many times when you might unwittingly perpetuate a falsehood, or contribute
to the virality of a dishonest meme or story by passing it on without
fact-checking. These things have consequences. They contribute to cultural
attitudes, and if such things could be traceable, you just might find you
helped cause a pandemic that ruins lives.

13.Use what you can do, to tackle what you
can’t

You know, growing up I was far more timid and reclusive. I wouldn’t talk
much because I couldn’t seem to find the words to say the things I wanted to
say. I had difficulty expressing anything, so in the end I just said nothing. It
wasn’t until late high school that I discovered I had an affinity for writing.
I enjoyed it because it allowed me to take my time. To choose the perfect
words. By holding open the speech bubble until I had hacked away at the dictionary
and refined everything I wanted to say to a distilled form, I gradually
increased my speaking vocabulary as well. I became more expressive, more
confident.

When I found my words, I also sort of found my place in life. I realised that
some problems can be tackled indirectly, by using what you have. What you’re
good at. You might not even know you’re good at it yet, but it’s there. Your
passion. Your creativity. Your ART. Waiting to be discovered. And when you find
it, you can use it. Maybe not to pay the bills or to right all the wrongs in
your life, but you can use it to express the things that can’t be expressed any
other way. And you don’t have to do it for anyone else’s benefit other than
your own. If you can’t do something you want to do – look at what you CAN do,
and find a way to turn that into a window to the life you want.

14.Turn your weaknesses into strengths

An extension to the previous life lesson. The point of this one is to say
that even if you have barriers in the way of your progress, don’t always view
them as obstructions. Sometimes, they can be an obstacle course, a playhouse to
be tackled and defeated, or even a fulcrum by which you can gain leverage over
your future.

If you’re ADD – harness your imagination and creativity. If you’re an
insomniac, recognize that you are just too strong and vitalized to be held
down. If your body is in pain, guess what? You have a superpower! No one can
handle pain like you can. Misery grants empathy. Despondence teaches gratitude.
You’re not limping, you just take your time. You see things clearly in the
interim between steps. You’re not paralyzed, you’re an observer, like a
sentient mountain that can watch the seasons pass in peace.

There is a perspective by which you can come to view the charge of every bad
thing in your life as the potential energy for a good thing. Anything that
makes you recoil in fear or revulsion is granting you an elastic boost against
some other obstacle. Every blow taken is a blacksmith’s hammer forging you into
something stronger, or the loading of emotional ammunition into an immensely
powerful weapon. Take your weaknesses, and learn from them. Learn how to paint
them onto your targets so that your life in chains has instead become a life of
specialized training, making you better prepared than anyone for taking on this
world from the specific vector that only you can use.

15.Learn by doing.

Learning doesn’t come easy to everyone. I am one of those people. You could
sit me down to a lecture explaining exactly how to do something, and for some
reason it just won’t sink in. I can crack open a textbook and read it so many
times I cold quote it verbatim and still
not understand what it actually says. Some people are just like that, and to an
extent I think we all are. But that’s okay. You don’t have to understand
everything BEFORE you try to tackle it.

Take it from the guy who obsessively plans things to the smallest detail before
starting everything. There comes a point where there’s only so much you can do
in your head. You have to roll up your sleeves and get a feel for how it all
fits together. Explore your tasks with your fingertips, come to know them like
you know the streets you grew up in. If not comprehending, then at least
recognition can be your guide. It’s only once you get down to the wires and
coding that you can begin to see the patterns emerge.

Learning doesn’t come easy to me, but things don’t have to be easy to be
possible. Sometimes you just have to find the path of least resistance, and
sometimes, paradoxically, that involves going the long way around instead of
getting stranded at square one. Get your hands dirty. Try to grapple with the
things you don’t understand. There are no guarantees, but you’ll find that
there are elements to everything that can’t be learned through standard
studying methods. There is an emergence to reality that can only be absorbed
through touch.

And when that fails?

16.Don’t be afraid to ask questions.

It doesn’t make you look stupid not to know something. Everyone has a first time
for learning everything, and it can’t all be crammed in during childhood. In
fact, it is the willingness to learn which makes asking questions such a GOOD
thing. It shows that you KNOW you are not yet done on your journey of
self-improvement. There is wisdom in this humility (and yes, this is ACTUAL
humility). Asking questions demonstrates that you are aware of what knowledge
you lack, and you are actively working to improve it.

Anyone who might call you stupid for asking questions is criticising you for the
exact issue you were in the process of correcting at the time, which is as
stupid as laughing at an overweight person in the gym. It makes no sense to
criticise someone for the problem they are literally fixing as you do it. The
real stupid ones are those who have no questions to ask. They’re the ones who
lack that curiosity, the innate human drive to become more than you are. That’s
the best thing we have, and it should be cherished.

17.Friends aren’t just the ones you would take
a bullet for.They’re the ones who
would take a bullet for YOU.

It’s easy to say you would bend the whole world for any of your friends.
It’s quite another to know in your heart that the sentiment is not only true,
but returned. If you should find yourself compiling a list of your friends and
realise it is miles long, then in my opinion, you are not compiling a list of
friends. Now it might very well be that I simply have a different standard of
friendship, and my usage of this term does not map with yours. That’s fine. I
am telling you MY definition of friendship. Because the truth is, in MY view,
there is no real way to compile such a list and have those you call friends be
in a different category to those you call family.

True friends should be just as beloved, and every bit as rare. In a way, that’s
what makes them so precious. And if you don’t know such people yet? You will.
Someday, you might even be betrayed by one of them, and foreswear the entire
concept. It’s easy to do. And it’s hard to trust someone that much once, let
alone multiple times. But the reality is we are not islands. At some point, you
end up needing to put your trust in another, and that is not a sign of
weakness. It’s a leap of faith. I hope you find people in your life who you
know would catch you. Chances are… you do, even if you don’t know it yet. You
won’t find them if you don’t remain open to the possibility.

18.Live as though the world is as it ought to
be.

Cynics are those who see what is wrong with the world but find it easier to
become part of the problem than the solution. It is those who have been
defeated by life who take refuge in cowardly sentiments like “you can’t change
the system” or “people are just assholes”. They’re not. Because so long as we
see what’s wrong in the world, we share something in common besides the easy
way out. We share a drive to make things better. Giving up may be easier, but
fighting is how you end the pain.

Don’t wait for social permission to take action. Don’t take a vote before
standing up for what is right. If you can see what is wrong with the world, and
you have ANY ability to affect it, do not let the cynicism of others paralyze
you. If you’re not willing to live the way you think the world should work –
you’re a hypocrite, but worse than that, your dreams are wasted on you. What’s
the point in wanting for a better world if you won’t do your part to help it be
that way? Maybe everyone is as good as you are deep down? Maybe if everyone who
feels the way you do took action too, the world WOULD be that way?

That’s all the world really is. People making decisions. Choices that have
consequences that ripple like a skimmed pond influencing everyone it comes into
contact with. Don’t be the influenced – be the influencer. Compromise when you
have no choice, sure. Be affected by others just as you want them to be
affected by you. But don’t lose who you are.

19.Savour every moment.

Or at least the important ones. I know this sounds boring and generic, like the
scribbled sentiment of a hallmark card. But really think about what this means.
Have you ever suffered a sickness, like a really painful sore throat? And as
you sit there fixating on the pain and discomfort, you wish you could remember
what it felt like to have a throat that isn’t sore? But because human beings
live in the moment and the flavour of past events disappears so quickly, we
find it hard to do that.

So do it now. Think about the things in your body that aren’t hurting. Think
about the things in your life that are right. What it feels like to have an arm
or a leg. The people you still have access to. The utilities you take for
granted. Know them, and commit to memory, right now, what it feels like to not
have a sore throat, or an upset stomach, or how it feels to have a phone at
your fingertips, or to be able to call someone you love and tell them so.

Do this, not because when that bad day comes and you can’t access these things
you will then be able to perfectly remember them. You won’t. The flavour of the
moment will still be absent. Do this
instead so that when that day comes you won’t be spitting curses at yourself
for NOT having taken the time to savour that experience. THAT’S the worst part.
That’s where the “I wish I had just one more chance” comes from.

Feeling ill and wanting to remember what “well” feels like is frustrating, but
even worse is wanting that, and knowing you never took the time to think about
how it feels to be well in the first place. You see, one feels like a
frustration that you couldn’t do anything about, but the other feels like a
failure on your own part. You may find that you feel just a little bit better
on those bad days from knowing that while you had access to the thing you love
– you were keenly aware of it.

And if you think it’s too late for you to do this – stop. Change your
perspective. Because you are focussing on what you CAN’T change, what you have
already LOST. This is about taking inventory of what you have. What could you
lose tomorrow that would make your life even worse? Think of those things or
people, recognize them, appreciate them, cling to them. Know that you have more
than just your pain in this life. This won’t only benefit you in the future,
you may just find it benefits you right now.

20.Expect the worst.

Have a plan for every worst case scenario you can think of, and extras for the
ones you can’t. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been faced by an
unexpected disaster and simply opened my “this specific disaster” box to handle
it. I make a point of being prepared for every possible situation, and not just
because I’m Batman (although I do have a plan to take down the Justice League
should they ever go rogue). I do it because I’ve been blindsided far too often
in life. Every time you count on someone else, or trust in the system not to
fail you, that’s when everything goes wrong.

And it’s not just about having a plan; it’s about being mentally prepared.
There have been times in your life when you have woken up to a nightmare.
Whether it was an agonizing pain in immediate need of attention, the screams of
a loved one in need or a crash of something breaking. We’ve all been thrown
into those situations and had to cope with it on the fly. If I told you this
would happen to you in five minutes, the stress of knowing it would eat you
alive. Trying to prepare for something like this is like preparing to operate
on yourself. Your own survival instincts compel you to reject it. That’s why it
helps in the long run if you can begin constructing a “disaster mode”, a calm, rational
mind-set which you can slip into when the worst happens. Because when it DOES
happen, you don’t have the option of rejecting it.

To do this, sometimes a little more than practise alone is necessary.

21.Take control of your emotions.

Take it from me, this isn’t easy. Growing up, I was a wild tempest of emotion.
More often being taken along for a ride by them than just experiencing. At some
point I just kind of overloaded my own circuits and burned them out. It took me
a long time to relearn how to feel, so in a way, it’s like I’ve had two
childhoods. This has shown me the power of emotion, and the danger of it. More
than most people, I have a sense of how emotions should exist to serve your
thinking mind, rather than outright taking control of it.

Your emotions are an important part of your nature, the very essence of your
being. You would not be you without them. Your emotions help you to understand
when something is wrong, or harmful. They keep you running when you need to
run, and they keep you swinging when you have no other choice. Emotions are our
first warning system against danger – but THEY ARE NOT THE DECISION MAKERS.
They can cause you to overreact, or even to react based on wrong information.
If someone feels off to you, for example, your feelings might compel you to
judge them harshly, but your intellect can analyse that experience and realise
that those emotions came from somewhere else.

Emotions present to you the problem, but it is up to your MIND to find the
solution. Thought comes first. It has to, because your thoughts are what you
are. Your emotions are just chemical reactions taking place in response to what
happens around you. To react on emotion alone is to react by instinct, like an
animal. It is to surrender your humanity, and all that makes you special and who
you are. When your emotions call for you to panic or freak out, simply
acknowledge the situation they are trying to alert to you to. Accept the
message, and then put those feelings in a box while you take action with
thought.

You don’t have to be ruled by your emotions, and you don’t have to supress
them. Just find the right place for them, and keep them there. If you really
find it so hard to control your emotions, just try analysing them before you
react BASED on them. If you can’t find a rational justification for the
response, allow yourself to consider the possibility that this emotion should
not be in command of your vessel right now. People think that they can’t reason
with their emotions, but they can. If anything, reason is what calms them. You
only have to try. But I understand this is easier said than done.

22.You cannot purchase redemption.

People think that owning up to their mistakes is synonymous with taking
responsibility for them, and that conflation between responsibility and blame
has had tremendous negative impacts on things like rape culture and legal
accountability. It’s bullshit. An apology or an admission of fault is not a
solution to any real problem, although it can’t hurt. What people don’t seem to
understand is that mistakes or past sins are not erased by offering up some
sort of sacrificial lamb. They say two wrongs don’t make a right, but what is
actually meant by that phrase is that two NEGATIVES don’t make a POSITIVE.

You can’t just sit there and feel bad for what you’ve done and think that
balances some cosmic ledger. You can’t try to self-flagellate your way out of
the consequences of your actions. They have to be braved. There’s no watchful
eye in the sky who can take away your debts, the only way to truly take
responsibility is to ACCEPT what you have done wrong, and work to actively
CHANGE yourself for the better. Doing right by the person you wronged is a damn
good start, but it’s not a way of resetting the scales, and if you’re doing it
for that reason then you’re ultimately just acting out of selfishness. You
shouldn’t need an incentive to take care of someone you wronged. It should be a
natural response.

I’ve seen so many people think they can bargain their way out of the
consequences of a situation they helped create, but no, it doesn’t work like
that. It doesn’t matter if your guilt is sincere or false, if you act out of
compassion or rationale. If what you’re trying to do is use some kind of hard
labour to work off a debt, you’ve missed the point. It isn’t a debt. There
isn’t anything to pay back. Actions have consequences and those consequences
ARE how the universe finds its own balance. But the imbalance within yourself
has to be resolved with more than a confession. You have to work at yourself.
You have a responsibility to not only do right by the wronged, but to make sure
you don’t wrong anyone that way again.

23.Learn from the past. Don’t live in it.

Show me a perfect person and I will show you a person whose life means
nothing. The lessons we learn, such as the ones I am now listing, are not
exercises in futility. They are part of a journey. On that journey you will
make mistakes. You will do things you regret. Now I am not going to tell you to
forgive yourself for those mistakes. You shouldn’t. That may be an unpopular
opinion, but it is also one easily justified. Just think of those who have
wronged you. You may forgive them, and that’s your right. But do they have the
right to forgive themselves? No. Regret is there for a reason. It’s to make us
better people.

But learning from the past and letting it consume your life are two different
things. You don’t HAVE to forgive those who have harmed you, but you shouldn’t
live under their shadow at the same time. You shouldn’t forgive yourself, but
that doesn’t mean flogging yourself daily. The reason these feelings like remorse
or revenge exist are to motivate changes. Whether you want to change yourself,
to make yourself less likely to be victimized, or to wrestle some kind of
positive change into a world wracked by injustices. Let those feelings motivate
action where it is healthy. But if there is nothing to change – let them go.

Don’t let yourself be defined by what has happened to you in the past, even if
it has covered you in scars. Don’t let yourself become a trauma with a person
attached. You are so much greater than that. Inside of you is a whole universe,
bigger and more complex than a thousand lifetimes of regrets and mistakes.
These things you cling to are remnants of lessons long ago learned and
treasured. And all that pent up energy driving you to act? It comes from the
memory of itself, a compulsion to change what needs to be changed as a
consequence of those events. If you have done all you can at this moment to
rectify those problems – allow yourself to let those clenched fists fall open.

This doesn’t mean forgiving yourself or others. It means understanding that the
reason these emotions exist is to compel an action that has already been taken.
The reason behind the drive has been satisfied, but people themselves are never
satisfied, and that is why you have to intervene. Make a conscious decision to
put the past in its place. Learn from it. Let it change you. But don’t let it
dominate you. What matters now is your future.

24.Listen to other people.

It isn’t brave or empowering to just blot out everyone else’s opinions. It
isn’t a heroic struggle against adversity, in fact it’s easy. It’s TOO
easy. Anyone can just ignore people they
don’t want to listen to. If you think you’re being clever by plugging your ears
and singing over the appeals of your peers, then let me tell you, you’re not.
Only a fool assumes that nobody else has anything of worth to share with them. What’s
really challenging is being willing to hear them out. Whether you like it or
not. To give serious consideration to every idea.

This is a lesson I learned not through confronting one of my own failings, but
through the constant irritation of being one of those people. You know, the ones who everyone else opens up to. The
ones who everyone feels compelled to spill their guts to about every deep,
personal issue – but who they NEVER LISTEN TO. So I try to listen to the
opinions of other people and to seriously consider what they say. The harder I
want to disagree with it, the more I force myself to stop and really think
about it first.

I’m tired of being right, of being the one who keeps warning others about the
disasters on the horizon, only to have them completely ignore me and still get
hit by it after all. I don’t mind being the one people come to for advice; in
fact I like to help wherever I can. And sure, you have no obligation to take my
advice. But at the same time – don’t ask for it if you don’t really want it. I
can’t change the fact that no one ever listens to me, but I can at least learn
from it and offer them that courtesy. That is something I work very hard at
doing.

25.Never let someone else’s presence in your
life be the most important thing about it.

A life dedicated solely to another is a wasted life, and it dishonours that
other person as well, as instead of enriching the world in their name, you have
become an expansion of their own selfishness, doubling the negative impact they
have on the world while keeping the positive impact for yourself. In a way, it
turns them into an object. People are not affection dispensers that exist to
make you feel good. A true loving relationship is one in which both
participants try to bring out the best in the other. Living in worship or
subjugation to that person is a waste of your energy and theirs.

And if you can’t find someone to give you equal love and respect? There’s
nothing bad about being alone.

26.Get back up.

Get up. It doesn’t matter how hard you got
brought down, it doesn’t matter how many times they kicked you, it doesn’t
matter how much it hurts. Get. Back. Up. The fact that you can hurt is the
reason you can and will get back up. That pain, as an emotion, represents your
thriving will to exist in a state other than defeat. Because there is still
something within you that can suffer from imprisonment. You are not so broken
that you have accepted the cage, and that makes you powerful.

Maybe you’re just waiting for a sign, for someone or something to give you the
smallest hand up, for that tiniest bit of added ease to be an incentive to
commit so much energy to the struggle. You can’t count on that in life. But
fine. Let this be it. Let this be your sign. This is me telling you that now is
the time. Now is ALWAYS the time. And the proof of this is in the fact that you can still be hurt. Because deep
down, you still want to get up.

Pain is a symptom of having a WILL to survive. No matter how defeated you feel,
no matter how broken you may be, know that there is some part of you, some
divine organ in your soul that will not and cannot let you give in. Because if
you can hurt, you can want for something, even if it’s just for there to be no more
pain. And if you can want for something, you
have hope. Those death throes you feel are the spasms of a soul that
refuses to stay down until the final count. So get. Back. UP.

27.You can’t choose to be happy. You can only
choose to allow happiness in.

Peace of mind isn’t something you can order up over the phone or download from
the internet. It’s not something you can request. It’s just something that kind
of finds you, in its own time. And even then, it doesn’t stay. You’re never
going to be happy all the time, and you know what? If you were? You would just
become desensitized to it. That’s the cruel trick of life. The struggle to
achieve which is so intrinsic to human nature is literally designed to be an insatiable hunger.

You’re not SUPPOSED to be able to fill that hole. The higher you climb, the
higher you want to climb, because that urge to keep getting better is what has
brought us this far up the evolutionary dogpile. It’s why we’re still alive.
But it’s also why the richest and most powerful keep trying to accrue more
wealth and power. Why those who have everything they could ever want still seem
to invariably turn to drugs and corruption.
Endless happiness is like the floater in your eye you keep trying to
chase but never catch.

I think you have to have fallen to the deepest pits of despair, and made it
your home to really understand what happiness is. To recognize it when it
graces the periphery of your ceaseless sensory bombardment. It isn’t a blinding
sunbeam that parts the clouds. It’s a glance of soft light that traces the
contours of a vase by the window. The gentle swaying of a tree in the wind. The
tiny moments when you peer into the cracked stone of a pavement and feel something
not quite explainable move through you. The stillness between struggles. Happiness
is realising you have the capacity to not be in pain, if but for a short while.

But you have to let it in.

28.What’s more important?

I don’t know if this is strictly a lesson or more of a general attitude, the
lines are beginning to blur at this point. This is something I say to myself whenever
I can. It’s a kind of motivating mantra that helps me put things in
perspective. Every day I find myself so bogged down with trivial concerns and
problems that seem so big. I seem to have so much going on in my head, it can
become this chaotic fog of anxieties, obligations, and half-formed thoughts.

What’s more important? I’m not sure I even understand what the question means,
but somehow it cuts right through the fog and brings me into perfect alignment
with my own centre. I suppose what it really means is… keep your dreams inside you.
It’s a reality check. Know what it is you want to do, why you want to do it –
why it NEEDS to be done, and always make sure you are moving in that direction.
It doesn’t matter how slowly you’re moving, just so long as you’re closer today
than you were yesterday.

If you find yourself going backwards, that’s okay. It happens. The purpose of
this mantra is not to shame you for your mistakes, but to help you recognize
them, so you don’t keep going
backwards. Whenever the haze overtakes your eyes, whenever you find life
hitting you with obstacle after obstacle and in all the chaos you get turned
around, you lose sight of who you are and where you’re going… stop. Ask
yourself. What’s more important? The answer isn’t always obvious or easy, but
it’s always there. It’s always a truth that lives at the core of you. Seek it.
Find it. Cherish it. And then dedicate every moment of your life to realizing
it.

29.Everyone has their own story.

You’re not the only one who has known this pain. You’re not even the most hurt
person you know. The truth is we are all tangled in an invisible mess of other
people’s plot threads. We all play unseen roles in other people’s experiences.
Our words, our presence, the things we do all have a weight to them that cannot
be immediately felt, but which change the balance of countless variables around
us. Even those you try to keep away from your life to protect them are, in this
way, affected by you. They all have their own story, just like yours.

Never consider them the supporting cast in your own. When you close the chat
window or hang up the phone, they keep existing. Things happen to them. They
change. They hurt. They experience things you can’t imagine. When you next
speak to them, do not assume that time has stood still for them or that they
are the same people you last spoke to with the same limits or issues. Likewise,
if you think you have someone pegged at a single glance, if you think they can
be boiled down to the handful of conclusions you reached about them – think
again.

You might think someone is lazy because they are poor. Or that they are
snobbish if they are rich. You might think the Republican is a monster, or the
Democrat is a wuss. But stop and consider the possibility that those other
people arrived at the conclusions they did for very real, sensible reasons.
They are real people. They have histories spanning years or decades, and you
can’t sum them up to one memory or a title. Maybe if you had been in their
shoes, you would be like them too. Maybe their stories matter as much as yours
does.

If someone seems to have changed, or if they now hold views you didn’t expect
of them, inquire as to why. Learn about them. Take a few steps of their journey
with them rather than just dismissing them out of hand. Chances are, they’ve
learned a few things you could benefit from as well. You don’t have to manifest
their views in order to respect them.

30.Don’t be afraid of tasking risks or seeking
out new opportunities.

This is a lesson I have learned, but not internalized. Fear and the resistance
of obstructive circumstances can be hard things to face. Perhaps even
insurmountable. But the fact that I am not practising what I preach on this one
does not make the lesson wrong. It means that I am proof that it is right. I am
stuck at square one because I have yet to embrace this lesson, and I know I am
wrong for not doing so. Don’t be like me. Be better.

31.Never make promises you can’t keep.

As a kid I always longed to visit Loch Ness. Something in my spirit called for
me to be there, and I’ve never figured out why. My parents always promised to one
day take me there. That never really happened. It's nobody's fault, we were a poor family. And it’s not a big deal now, but it
was a major disappointment to me at the time. That was probably around the time
I first decided that I wouldn’t take promises lightly. But I’ve been
disappointed far worse many more times since then, and this has only compounded
how seriously I take them.

Broken promises sting like the worst papercut, whether it’s the broken trust of
a colleague who lets you down, or the almost always unsustainable vow of
eternal love. Living in a world where we can count on one another is so
important, particularly to us, as a social species. That’s why it always wounds
our hearts at least a little bit when other people fail us, and so much more
when we are betrayed. Deep down, I don’t really believe that other people can be
counted on. I’ve been betrayed too many times myself, been disappointed by too
many people to really believe that. But I’d like to. And that’s why I live by
example on this one.

When you make a vow you are taking a hypothetical future and converting it into
a fact. You are staking your honour as a human being on that reality coming to
fruition. Promises are more than just words, they are assurances of trust, a
stable wall upon which those who are in need will lean in difficult times. Even
a small promise, something seemingly inconsequential, carries encoded within it
your intrinsic trustworthiness. Letting people down when you have given them
that stability, that reassurance in the future has a negative effect on you,
and on the rest of the world. Take your promises seriously, or don’t make them
at all. This is the only way you can help cultivate a society where we can
count on one another.

32. Count your victories (Not just your defeats)

I bet if I asked for you a list of every mistake, every dumb thing you did,
everything you got wrong this week you wouldn’t have to think all that hard to
come up with one. But who is counting everything you got right? That’s just not
how the human mind works, right? I mean, how do you count how many times you
DIDN’T trip up? But YOU know what your
limitations are, probably better than anyone else. You know what you struggle
with, what’s difficult for you. If you are trying to improve yourself, if you’re
trying to expand your horizons, and all you’re counting are the trips, how can
you ever make any progress? For progress to be made you also need to CHART it,
to RECOGNIZE when it happens, otherwise, how can you know if you’ve progressed?

There isn’t a scale for what constitutes a valid success. Everyone’s life is
different. It’s more about what challenges you’re dealing with, and how they
personally affect you. Don’t let anyone tell you that if your biggest problem is
getting out of bed and facing the world in the morning, that’s not enough to be
considered a real challenge. We define challenges not by some objective
standard, but by how CHALLENGING they are, and that is necessarily a personal
definition. The best singer in the world might find no challenge at all in
singing a particular song, that doesn’t mean it should be easy to anyone else.
Likewise, if just walking from one room to another is a challenge for you, for whatever
reason, the fact that it would be easy for most people doesn’t negate that
difficulty.

Whether it’s physical or emotional, every single day you are fighting against
the resistance of your own limits, and every day you advance a lot further than
you realise. Don’t just set your course – chart it. Recognize your victories as
they come. Some days it will be one step forward - three steps back, but here’s
the thing, you KNOW, now, that you can handle that step forward. But no one
ever had to convince you that you could fall a few steps back, did they? That’s
why it’s important. Because in the grand scheme of things, that one step was a
permanent expansion of your frontiers, you pushed the borders of your world
just a little bit further than they were the day before, and if you don’t think
that’s a victory, you’re crazy. It is. But you have to let yourself be proud.
Today you did several things, probably MANY things to be proud of, but all you’re
thinking about is the coffee you spilled this morning.

It’s easy to be conscious of your defeats. Life trains us to be that way. And
you should be- that’s how we learn. Unfortunately, you have to train YOURSELF to be just as aware of your victories. It’s as
hard for me as it is for anyone, but trust me, your life gets a lot better if
you recognize and reward the progress you make, when you make it. Because the
truth is, we’re all going somewhere, and we’re all trying our best. Today, you’re
a little bit closer than you were yesterday, EVEN if today was a bad day. Stop
and think about it, and you’ll see I’m right.

33. And finally, this above all else: Times will be hard. Sometimes they will
be harder than the worst times you’ve ever lived through. But they will be better, too.

People have a tendency to be so negative. It’s like the bad things in life stick
to us while all the good things seem to rot away with time. Scars remain but
caresses leave no marks. Pain stays with us while kisses are forgotten. As
human beings, we fixate on the negative, we stew in it until it’s pickled into
our souls and we can’t get away. Sad memories, loss and failure become a part
of us. We get so used to seeing the bad that we forget that good can exist too.

But that’s just genetics. We’re prone to negativity for survival reasons. It’s
the evolutionary advantage of fleeing in terror from every sound. By only
believing in the bad things we have a higher chance to survive when the bad
things are real; and there is a legitimate advantage to that. We SHOULD be
aware of the bad.

But look, we’re more than just animals. We are the part of the universe that
can think and feel and analyse. The part that looks upon itself in awe. So we
have a responsibility to BE more than animals. Animals can get by on instinct
and reaction alone, but we can’t. We have to be able to maintain our sanity as
well as our bodies. To do that, we have to internalize the fact that however
dark our nights may be, there can and will always be a sunrise.

That goes for you, too. The person reading this right now. You’ve lived through
hard times, and they’re far from over. Life is a constant struggle. But that’s
not ALL it is. Whenever you have a good day, remember it. And next time you
have a bad one, remember that those good days exist. Whenever you triumph over
your own shortcomings, or defeat the adversity in your life – REMEMBER that you
did it. And next time you face an un-climbable wall, remember what happened to
the last one, and break right through it. You’re stronger than you think you
are, and dark days will always be bright again.

At least, that’s what I choose to believe. That’s my hope. May it be yours,
too.